Upper California, The

DESCRIPTION: "The Upper California, oh that's the land for me, It lies between the mountains and the great Pacific sea." It will bring freedom and life for the Saints. They will build their House of Prayer there and call on other nations to join them
AUTHOR: John Taylor (source: Cheney-MormonSongs; Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
EARLIEST DATE: 1863 (Savred Hymns and Spiritual Songs, according to Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
KEYWORDS: religious travel home | Mormon
FOUND IN: US(Ro)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Cheney-MormonSongs, pp. 68-69, "The Upper California" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, pp. 256-257, "(no title)" (1 text)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 184-185, Upper California" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #10829
NOTES [148 words]: The Mormons of course did not end up in California; they settled in Utah. But as late as 1846, they did not know where they would settle, and California was one of the places they were considering (see Claudia Lauper Bushman and Richard Lyman Bushman, Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America, Oxford University Press, 1999, 2001, p. 37). Brigham Young eventually changed their course, but evidently either the poem was written before that or the author did not realize that California, in even its broadest sense, referred to the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Or, as Greenway-FolkloreOfTheGreatWest, p. 256, explains, they thought "Upper California" was anything west of the Rockies.
Cheney gives a tune for this, but does not attribute it. Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest says that it is The Rose That All Are Praising, attributed to Edward J. Loder. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: ChMS068

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